Information regarding vehicular travel is currently gathered using a variety of techniques. For example, information relating to vehicular accidents is gathered through eyewitness reports to police or emergency personnel at the scene, or from motorist telephone reports received from emergency phones or cellular phones. Traffic is also observed visually from helicopters, which may utilize video cameras to record such traffic and facilitate the reporting of various travel characteristics. Video cameras are also placed adjacent to certain roadways to allow remote observation of travel conditions in front of the camera. In addition, sensors may be placed on certain roadways in order to count vehicles. Motorists obtain the gathered travel information through a variety of means, including television reports, radio reports, and internet websites.
Motorist reports of travel data are manually made on an ad hoc basis, and thus there often is no information regarding travel conditions in an area of interest. Similarly, helicopters, video cameras and sensors currently are only deployed in certain areas. Since the cost of such monitoring devices is very high, and since they require trained personnel to operate them, there are significant cost barriers that prevent such monitoring devices from being used to cover a significant percentage of roadways simultaneously. Additionally, because information gathering from motorist report, video cameras, and helicopters is performed manually, there can be significant latency when delivering the travel information.
Another problem with current methods is that it is difficult for motorists to get travel information for a specific area whenever they want such information. Television and radio broadcasts of travel information provide the same report to all listeners and viewers, and thus generally cover only the most commonly used roadways and the most serious travel problems. This forces the motorist to listen or watch a report, which usually contains far more information than he or she desires, and sometimes does not even contain the desired information at all. Additionally, the information is broadcast on the relevant station's schedule, and not necessarily when the motorist needs the information. One effect is that information can be stale by the time it is reported to the motorist, either because the travel condition has cleared or because the motorist has passed the point at which he could have selected a different route to his destination. Some internet websites offer a more specific report providing only information for the areas of interest to the user, but these typically are not accessible to motorists while they are operating their vehicles.
Vehicles today may contain equipment that utilize vehicle location information to support theft recovery or operator assistance, e.g., “LoJack” and “OnStar” equipment. The equipment communicates wirelessly with remote central systems to provide such support.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.